Wake Up Ol' Sleepyhead!

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The word counter script I downloaded to count how many words are in each of my blog entries gets the job done in fine fashion. Here is the Apple VoiceOver site I found it at:

http://homepage.mac.com/kilburns/voiceover/downloads.html

This represents one of the positive reasons I'm attempting to become as familiar as I can with AppleScript. It's also one of the few reasons I've personally needed to learn AppleScript for. It's another of my projects I deliberately set aside time for. I think it's a good thing, but I don't find many reasons to write scripts.

I watched the news show I like again this morning. It's not as easy to do that with over-the-air digital TV. Frequently, especially Sunday mornings it seems, I can't pick up any NBC stations. That's just what happens because I chose a life of poverty in order to have the ti-me to sit down and write.

The anchor of the news program made a statement that really fits how people see me around here. I'm thinking of what happened at the Class Reunion Luncheon I attended the other day. Chris Matthew agreed with a description of one of the pundits he had on his show by saying, "Yeah, yeah... he's like the crazy kid in class that everybody likes because he argues with the teacher."

I sorta did that at the reunion luncheon. It might have all gone well if the leader of the pack, a retired banker and conservative, hadn't pointed me out by name to imply that I might pop up and say anything because I was crazy. That didn't work out for him so well because of my "crazy kid" response.

The guy I have impulsively chastised over the years has never really understood why it is that although our classmates agree I'm a little quirky (because of my arrogant remarks), they like me anyway. He carries the clique in his attempted rebukes of my careactor. I rouse the rabble by way of it.

At the end of the luncheon, the now seventy-year-old "girls" in my class that I not-so-silently lusted for came up to me with big smiles on their faces and told me they still love me for saying my piece. Right in front of their seventy-plus husbands who beamed over the silliness of what their wives just said. Why am I always the last to know?

There seems to be some sort of ritualistic dynamic going on in regard to how blatantly I challenge the prevailing authority. I get real bold, and then immediately retreat as if to imply that I didn't really mean to be an upstart. When the so-called authority I crazily challenge rises to respond to the challenge of my remarks, they're attacking a shamed man.

I seem to bring it as if a maniac, but then I'm immediately ashamed of myself for not controlling my impulsive nature, and it not really a joke or an anticipated strategy. I really don't expect myself to act like that. I truly regret not being more diplomatic and tactful.

Sure, when these pompous blowhards get on a roll with their false dignity and build themselves up at the other's expense, many other people besides me in the room would like to do what I did, but it's not polite nor politically expedient. They'd have to actually be angry to stand and deliver the kind of diatribe I sometimes do.

One of the "last to know" things I finally have caught on to is that my "diatribes" are like "calculated country cooking". They make the mundane seem more exotic. I say what I "feel" most other people present would like to say, but are too smart to do that. My impulsive remarks seem to equate to those of the kid who noticed that the Emperor was nakid. He got away with it because he was an innocent kid who wasn't mature enough to know better.

If I were to look at this astrologically (and you can bet the farm that I do that soon after discovery), the first attribute I might attend to in my natal chart would be the placement of Mercury in the sign Aries. Mercury in Aries in the Sixth House.

In my natal chart Mercury only has on major aspect. A Trine to the Midheaven in Leo. Trines represent a 120° angular relationship, and are considered the most beneficent aspect in astrology. The Midheaven represents the most intimate point of contact the chart native has with the public.

When I act impulsively in this abrupt manner the public generally likes me for it. The keyword is "impulsively". If I deliberately try to use this dynamic to bring attention to myself it usually causes the opposite effect, and the likelihood of incurring humiliation of the most powerfully repugnant sort is very strong. Who needs that?

Homo sapiens in general, that's who, and insecure conservative types who need a strong man to run their lives for them. On the face of it, they think it's me, especially some females who really are alpha females and not dyed-in-the-wool baby-factories... Dammit!

I have experienced a lotta pain, and apparently caused a lotta pain because of how this paradoxical dynamic comes into play in my life. On the upside it makes me appear as some sort of world savior to people who think they need one, but it doesn't take long until I betray their expectations, and become the exact opposite for reasons they appear incapable of grokking.

It's a double-bind or more. I'm damned if I rise to some occasions only a miracle could explain, and I'm damned if I do because it's unbelievable. It's hard to explain. How could I not know why and how what happens if it appears I'm causing whatever it is TO happen?

The answer is simple to me because I'm inside of it. It amazes me that their questions ever arose. I do and say what I do and say because I don't expect myself to do and say that, so I have no defense against the unexpected.

After its all over and I've had ti-me to retreat into my inner court and contemplate the me-and-thee-ing (me-and-ing, meaning) sometimes I can make sense of the proceedings, but only from my own point of view, and hardly ever to anybody else's satisfaction.

Once upon a time I thought I was safe from this thing happening here in the little town I was mostly raised in from the sixth grade. The people here knew my parents and they know my siblings, and like the early Christians stated, it's impossible to be a prophet or a healer in your home town.

I act crazy for my classmates. I did it the first time at our twentieth reunion by getting drunk and insulting people and embarrassing my young wife to no end. I didn't go back to any reunions for another thirty years. Then in the last year I've been to two "luncheons" where the classmates met at a local restaurant to spend some time together, and I acted crazy at both of them.

It wasn't deliberate. I expected to be shunned, but I wasn't. Over the years I've eventually realized most of the classmates never held nothing against me for the way I acted at the nefarious twentieth reunion. They don't seem to wanna be my friend and buddies, but they like me and the crazy way I do things. Maybe I can stop now, but will they "like me" if I do?

"Crazy" doesn't have the stigma attached to it early on. I was led to think that acting crazy was detrimental to one's place in society, but later on after I had my remembering vision I began to question my former conclusions about what "acting crazy" means.

One of the more significant metaphors I've encountered that puts "acting crazy" into perspective came from the classical Chinese oracle called the Book of Changes (I Ching). I studied it as a book of wisdom and used it obsessively as an oracle for over thirty years daily. I heard another saying, "Beware the man of one book.", so I figured I better have two books of wisdom at least. There's more of course.

The metaphor in the Book of Changes is about a prince of a man, literally, whose father the King was captured along with his family by the tyrant king who held them for ransom from their people. Prince Chi was the oldest son.

In his culture, as the eldest son he had a duty to remain with his father, but his four brothers found ways to escape on the advice of the father, and leave him and Prince Chi in the hands of the tyrant. The only way Prince Chi could remain with his father unharmed was to feign insanity.

This became a big deal to me. I had a good reason as far as I was concerned. I had feigned insanity myself, and voluntarily committed myself to the insane asylum to find out if I could pass myself off among the people who had been put there by a court of law. I could and did. They told me so.

My study of the Prince Chi metaphor in the Emperor's Yellow Book forced me to ask myself why I felt as though the only way I could survive was to pretend to dissemble in front of God and everybody. Prince Chi's motivation to do it was perfectly clear, but my own are suspect. Are they not?

1715. Enough is enow.
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